OK so reverse order timeline of events like this that I'm aware of
- Laura Bailey being harassed for something a character she voiced in The Last of Us Part 2 did
- Anna Gunn being harassed because people misguidedly and misogynistically didn't like Skyler White (taking this back to 2008)
- Ahmed Best and the kid who played young Anakin being harassed by Star Wars fans after the Phantom Menace came out, taking us back to 1999. You could argue that these two weren't about the character's actions but rather the quality of the performances/product so its a bit difference but its still the same overall problem.
- I just happened to get curious about what TV Tropes had to say about All in the Family because my roomate was watching it. By weird coincidence, because I had commented about the first three when this news was posted in a discord server already, I learned it goes back to the 70s because an actor who appears in one episode and does something incredibly evil got hate mail over it. So yeah, this shit has been going on forever
But like. WHAT the fuck is going on with that. What is going on in brains that can't separate actor from character? Is it just needing an outlet.
I think there's some discussion to be had about this shit getting worse because of increased atomization, COVID, social media giving people easy access to celebrities, and a more media obsessed population in general. But it apparently goes all the way back to All in the Family so what is going on?
And I don't think that its a minor problem either! Ahmed Best and the small child that played Anakin have shared some pretty harrowing stuff. And like, this was a reality show but I've discussed before how upset the story of Hana Kimura is to me as a fan (if you look her up, suicide cw).
My best guess is that people with very little emotional intelligence have emotions over the media they consume and need to let it out on someone as an outlet? Combined with just, poor education leading to poor media literacy?
But yeah this has always confused me lmao. I truly wish to understand the confusing actions of humans.
I think it's two things:
Most people feel some degree of emotion when consuming fiction. I'm weird in that I feel mostly nothing when consuming fiction. For me anyways, it really just boils down to "this is all make believe lmao." I know people who are in the opposite spectrum, people who start crying when their favorite character dies.
People in the US at least have been groomed to approach fiction through literalism. By this, I mean how many times have you hear about wanting to create an immersive^TM^ experience, especially when it comes to movies or videogames? By crafting an immersive^TM^ experience, you're basically trying to blur the line between reality and fiction, and since the real world is a material world that we understand with our five senses, the fictional world is also a material world that we understand with our five senses. You're no longer sitting on your ass watching a medieval battle take place within a computer monitor but instead are inside that medieval world. When the cunning regent defeats the failson heir apparent in battle, it's just some older dude owning a younger dude and not the director and writers trying to express a broader thematic point. The regent doesn't represent ambition and vision, and the heir apparent doesn't represent the ancien regime that had outstayed its welcome. The regent doesn't represent the parts of medieval society that are unsatisfied with the status quo, and the heir apparent doesn't represent the conservative parts of medieval society that want to uphold the status quo. No, it's just an older dude randomly owning a younger dude in combat because that's how your five senses understand what's going on. But this is not the only way to approach fiction. You could approach fiction through a craftmanship lens, and appreciate fiction based on how well-crafted it is. You could approach fiction through an allegorical lens and see characters as avatars of more general concepts. You could approach fiction through a biographical lens in the sense that fiction is a means for the artist to communicate about themselves to the world (this unfortunately has led to parasocial obsession and stan behavior, so I guess not the best example). You could approach fiction through a political lens and judge fiction based on how well it serves a particular political goal.
With 1 and 2, if some actor plays an asshole character, it's harder for someone to emotionally check themselves and say, "This is make-believe. Why am I getting mad at some stranger pretending to be a fictional character who doesn't exist in real life? The character is an asshole because the director wanted the asshole character to be a stand-in for every single unhinged techbro who owns a Cybertruck, and the director doesn't like techbros because they are a socialist who thinks techbros need to be send down the countryside and contribute to society for once in their worthless lives."